The Premise
In order to decipher this structure as objectively as possible, an approach was taken that is unique to the literary world but hopefully will give a solid foundation to unraveling the architecture of The Sonnets. Instead of a literary analysis, the approach of a statistical analysis was taken, relying on techniques from statistics and computer science in order to quantify the relationships between the poems and their shared repetitions. The specifics of these techniques are explained in greater detail in these blog posts, as well as the literary conclusions drawn from them.
It is important to note here that the following work is not a flawless or perfect piece of research. I am not an expert on any of the topics discussed here, literary and mathematical, just a student of both. There are many possible sources of error, whether in not being able to find all repetitions used in The Sonnets, or errors in the choices and implementations of the methods. However I can state that this is an imperfect start to a study that can be easily expanded to include more data and better analyze it. At the very least it provides a start and hopefully enough supporting evidence to back up the claims that it makes.